


Shoulder the Burden

by Jacqueline Albright-Beckett (xaandria)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, fallen!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 06:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaandria/pseuds/Jacqueline%20Albright-Beckett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Oh no. No. He'd been doing so well.</em>
</p><p>Getting up from the couch would be impossible, because that would require letting go of the hunched and quavering shoulders of Castiel, heaving with silent sobs and too-short breaths.<br/><em></em><br/>Not Castiel. Cas. “Iel” meant “of God” and Cas had been adamant that he no longer deserved that distinction once he Fell.</p><p> </p><p>  <em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoulder the Burden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HisAngelOfThursday (ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor/gifts).



> Thanks and baked goods to my betas, frecklesarechocolate and plantainleaf.

Dean knew almost before he set his hand on the doorknob that this was going to be one of those nights.

He’d always been able to read a room; he could practically see where tension or joy flowed throughout a busy bar or test the atmosphere of a police station before he’d even introduced himself. Tonight, in the bunker, there was an oppressive heaviness to the air that caught at his chest.

_Oh no. No. He’d been doing so well._

Sam looked up as Dean walked in and deposited the plastic grocery bags on the ground just to be rid of them. Sam’s eyes were rimmed in red - from fatigue, from barely contained tears, probably from both. Getting up from the couch would be impossible, because that would require letting go of the hunched and quavering shoulders of Castiel, heaving with silent sobs and too-short breaths.

Not Castiel. Cas. “Iel” meant “of God” and Cas had been adamant that he no longer deserved that distinction once he Fell.

Dean sank onto the couch on the other side of Cas and held out his arms; wordlessly, he and Sam made the transfer. They’d done this so many times that Cas didn’t even seem to notice except to twine his fist tightly in the folds of Dean’s shirt as he settled against Dean’s chest. Dean smoothed Cas’s hair helplessly, hating how impotent he felt against the shadows that had stolen Cas away and turned him to this hollow weight in his arms.

The glance he shared with Sam said more than they’d ever be able to put words to. _How long? Too long. What about you? Not great, but I can hold on - he needs you more._

Dean stayed motionless on the couch, cradling Cas, as his leg fell asleep and his shirt grew clammy with tears at the shoulder. There was a rhythm to these seizures of despair, a pattern that could not be disrupted or broken without rendering Cas nearly catatonic for days. He needed to be held - needed someone to cling to, to physically reassure him that someone was there and that he was not spiraling into nothingness. As the sobs became softer and his breathing gradually became deeper, Dean gently brought them both to standing, never letting go, letting Cas lean against him with his full weight like a crutch as they made their slow and careful way to their bedroom.

Cas did not resist as Dean lowered him to the mattress; indeed, his eyelids were already drooping with the utter exhaustion that always followed this first bout with the darkness. He was clearly in a deep sleep by the time Dean finished pulling up the covers, dark hair tousled against the white of the pillow despite Dean’s best attempts to smooth it down. Dean leaned over to kiss Cas gently on the temple before standing up and wandering slowly back into the living room.

Sam’s posture struck a chord in Dean’s middle, a minor counterpoint to the one already thrumming with sick worry over the man he’d just left in his bed. Bent nearly double, elbows resting on his knees, palms pressed against his eyes as though to block out every dim strand of light in the room for fear that it might illuminate something else in the dark recesses of his mind - in that instant Sam looked far older than his thirty years. _Except that it’s more than thirty years, isn’t it?_ Dean had stopped trying to calculate how old and worn and bent they all were; they had dozens of IDs with dozens of birthdates and none of them actually mattered as any sort of measure of what their souls had endured.

He’d moved quietly, catching Sam in an unguarded moment; as soon as Sam heard the tiny squeak of Dean’s rubber soles on the floor his hands flew away from his face and he straightened, clearing his throat. “How’s Cas?” he asked, his voice raw.

“The usual.” The couch creaked slightly as Dean settled onto it next to Sam. “I’ll need to go check on him in about half an hour. He really tuckered himself out.” He hesitated. “Did he... say anything this time?”

Sam shook his head. “He just started shaking. The usual.”

The heavy sigh nearly brought tears - frustrated, concerned, helpless tears - along with it. “The usual,” Dean repeated dully. He looked over to his brother, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “The usual with you, too?”

Sam’s lips compressed into a thin line. “Dean, I’m -”

“Fine. Yeah. You’ve been so many different flavors of ‘fine’ that I’m starting to lose track.” Despite the dull ache that the words spawned, this was infinitely easier than what would happen when Dean returned to his bedroom. Sam he could cajole, draw out, leach the poison like a poultice and leave his brother drained but healing. He knew how to take care of Sam.

Sam talked. Reluctantly at first, haltingly, with long pauses and forced exhalations that were not sighs but not sobs either. His words circled the actual reason slowly, as though naming it outright might cause it to flee back into the vaults of his mind and fester there. But finally - “It’s my fault.”

It always seemed to come down to that. Sam could elaborate all he wanted - “Cas took everything that was tearing my soul apart, he saw the things that I did, and he took that into himself because I couldn’t handle it -” but no matter what embellishments the reason wore, it was always the same reason.

“Shit happens,” Dean said after a long stretch of silence threatened to stifle them. “And sometimes it happens because of things we do. Or don’t do. Or should have done. And people blame us. And we blame ourselves. Yeah. A lot of shit is our fault.” He shifted, trying to pin down the words he wanted to say. “But we own up to it. And then it’s not our fault anymore, it’s our responsibility. And we fix what we fucked up. We don’t make other people deal with it.”

It was better than saying it wasn’t Sam’s fault, even though it really wasn’t. Sam would never accept that answer. But this? This he could accept.

And he did. A single nod, and suddenly his shoulders were a little more solid. He cleared his throat as he stood, making some excuse Dean barely heard about going to bed. Dean heard Sam’s bedroom door shut down the hall and he closed his eyes briefly.

He hated this next part.

His and Cas’s bedroom was illuminated only by the orange glow from the power strip in the corner, making Cas into nothing more than an indistinct dark shape against a darker background as Dean slipped into the room. He was sitting at the edge of the bed, back straight, head bowed, and though Dean couldn’t see it, he knew that Cas was gripping his knees so hard that the knuckles trembled and the skin was white.

Dean’s hand automatically went to rub lightly along Cas’s spine as he sat, and at the touch Cas seemed to melt, shoulders rounding forward and frame slumping as though he were suddenly boneless. Dean guided Cas down until he was cradling the other man’s head in his lap, rubbing Cas’s shoulder in his best attempt to be soothing.

“I’m sorry.” It was nearly soundless, barely a whisper, and it broke Dean’s heart in two. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” Dean swallowed and he squeezed Cas’s arm.

“I’m - I’m sorry - I’m sorry - I’m so sorry -”

Dean closed his eyes as he bent over Cas protectively. “I know, babe. I know. I know.”

Cas didn’t seem to hear him, continuing the voiceless litany, but Dean knew that if he stopped responding it would escalate - Cas curled into a ball, pulling at his own hair as he apologized to no one, was an image that would haunt Dean for the rest of his days. And so he sat, rocking slightly, murmuring his own answering chant against Cas’s cheek, his throat aching and tears burning at the corners of his eyes as he held himself together by the barest of threads. Because if he fell apart, Cas would be lost.

Dean had tried forgiving him once. Just once. Cas had grown absolutely still at the words and Dean wondered if he’d done it, if he’d found a way - but that was the first time that Cas had lain motionless for two straight days, and the only time he’d said even a handful of words about it afterward: “You can’t forgive me. It’s not you I’ve wronged, at least not... and I don’t deserve forgiveness for...”

The emptiness in Cas’s voice had chilled Dean to his marrow. He had tried his best not to stray from the established pattern since then.

The bleak winter dawn was still perhaps an hour away when Dean numbly realized that Cas had been quiet for some time. He opened his eyes; they felt rough and sandy and abused. Tentatively, he ran his hand down Cas’s arm to grip the other man’s hand and nearly wept in relief as Cas took it.

“You ready to sleep?” His voice was gravelly and guttural, and he cleared his throat. “Cas?”

“Yes.”

Muscles aching from such a long time in an unnatural position of grief, Dean moved slowly as he slid up the bed, Cas moving under his own power next to him as they navigated in the dark to their customary spots. Exhaustion making him clumsy, Dean reached out and traced his fingers along the first warm flesh they encountered, which happened to be Cas’s cheek. “Cas. I do love you. You know that, right?”

“I’ve never doubted it.”

“Then...” Dean licked his lips. “You and I, we’re in this for the long haul. Let me shoulder some of what you’re carrying. It kills me to watch it break you, time after time.”

In the beat of silence that followed Dean felt a flash of cold, thinking he’d gone too far, until he felt Cas’s hand on his arm. “I ask too much of you.”

“No.” Dean propped himself up on one elbow. “You don’t ask enough.”

“And you think I’m strong enough to watch it break _you_?” Cas’s voice cracked with weariness.

“It already does. Every time. I’m just good at hiding it.” Dean coughed. “You’ve clearly got enough on your mind.”

Cas let out a wavering sigh, the note of it a hint that he was not yet on the winning side of his ordeal. “Dean. You know that I can’t... that this is mine. It isn’t something that words could hold, even if I could share it.”

The answer hadn’t been unexpected. Dean nodded dully. “Figured.”

“But...”

Dean’s eyes widened slightly. “Yeah?”

“You… I have always admired your steadiness. Despite everything. Maybe because of everything. Perhaps… if I were to emulate that…”

Dean turned the phrases over in his mind for a few moments. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“Let me take care of you. Like you do for me. Let me try to take some pain from you, instead of force-feeding it to you time after time.”

“What?” Dean asked numbly. “No. No, Cas, that’s – you know that’s not how I do things. And you’re stronger than I’ll ever be, because you can actually let go without it destroying you.”

“Can I?” Cas asked in a small voice. “Do you really think this isn’t destroying me? And everyone around me?”

 _Of course not_. The phrase nearly tumbled out of Dean’s mouth before he clamped his jaw tightly. He knew it was a lie, and worse, Cas would know it was a lie. “Better to let it out where we can do something about it.”

“So can I say the same thing to you?”

The question caught Dean off guard. Cas tended to do that from time to time. “I’m – different. Trust me, you don’t want me spilling my psyche all over your shoes. That’ll only make a mess.”

Cas reached up to touch a trembling hand to the side of Dean’s neck. “Shared pain is lessened. I know that better than anyone. And knowing that I can undo some of the damage that I’ve caused… will help. It will.”

He sounded so sincere that Dean had to swallow as he lowered himself back down to his pillow. “It’s not a switch I can just turn on and off.”

“I know.”

“Can’t exactly crash and burn on command, you know.” Oddly enough, though, the words were thick and clumsy around the aching lump in his throat.

“Yes.”

“And right now? It’d be a disaster. You’re still shaking from your own fight with your devils. Wouldn’t the two of us paint a pretty picture?”

“Any picture with you in it is pretty.”

Dean snorted, and the sound was enough like a sob that another followed against his will. He felt Cas pull him closer and the sudden reversal of roles snapped a tension between his shoulder blades that he never let himself acknowledge. “Well,” he managed to choke out between gasps, unable to suppress the cascade any longer, “if you’re okay enough to make stupid jokes…”

Cas didn’t answer beyond running a hand along the top of Dean’s head in a reflection of the smoothing motion Dean had tried not an hour before, and the gesture was so tender that Dean could not help himself. His chest heaved as the wall he’d erected came down, little by little, as he allowed himself to come apart in Cas’s – Castiel’s – his angel’s protective embrace for the first time he could remember.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean seemed different.

Sam couldn’t put his finger on it. It wasn’t in the way his brother moved, nor was it anything to do with the way he talked to either Sam or Cas.

He watched Dean pour coffee, brow furrowed as he tried to isolate what it was that threw him off. Cas cleared his throat across the table and raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and Sam realized he was staring.

It wasn’t until he looked up from his laptop later and caught Dean in a perfectly ordinary moment of turning a page that it hit him: it wasn’t in the way he was moving. It was in the way he _wasn’t_ moving. Wasn’t fiddling. Wasn’t rolling his shoulders restlessly, as though he was wearing something uncomfortable and needed to keep shifting the weight. Now that Sam had seen it, he couldn’t ignore it; it was there as plain as day.

Dean looked up, as though he could feel eyes on him. “Sammy? Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, shaking his head. His eyes caught Cas’s and the other man nodded slightly, solemnly, and Sam blinked as he returned his gaze to his screen.

Somehow, despite the previous evening, everything _was_ okay.

 


End file.
